Steam-Powered 2

It occurs to me that I haven’t posted about Steam-Powered 2: More Lesbian Steampunk Stories being published. It sort of slid sideways into the world, first as an ebook and, later, appearing by intervals on Amazon and Book Depository as a paper book. I have an e-copy but have not yet seen a paper copy, although I know some others have. I haven’t read it, because I don’t read ebooks, but others have. It doesn’t feel real yet to me, but it is real, and you can buy it, if diverse broadly-defined steampunk about lesbians is of interest to you.

It has a cover!

It has a TOC!

It has a Kindle version on Amazon US and Amazon UK! It has an ebook version on the publisher’s website! It has a print version on Amazon US and Book Depository! I’m afraid I don’t know why it’s priced so much higher than the first anthology. I hope you will consider buying it, in paper or e-form.

It has reviews! In which awesome things are said about my story, “Selin That Has Grown In The Desert”, and the anthology as a whole! Here are some snippets.

Aliette de Bodard, reviewing the book on her blog, says:

“On balance, I thought that the best stories in the book were those that moved away from the stereotype of two women falling in love, and dealt with other aspects of the relationship: either further along in time, like Nisi Shawl’s “The Return of Cherie”, or by questioning its power dynamics and putting it into a colonial framework (such as Stephanie Lai’s “One Last Interruption Before We Begin”); or by eschewing the mad adventure steampunk altogether and focusing on much smaller-scale events (Alex Dally MacFarlane’s awesome “Selin that Has Grown in the Desert”, by far and above my favourite story in the book).” [Read the full review.]

Tori Truslow, reviewing at Sabotage Reviews, says:

“Another highlight is Alex Dally MacFarlane’s ‘Selin That Has Grown in the Desert’. This one’s also low on the steam. As a whole it’s a brilliant, understated anti-steampunk tale – and structurally a kind of anti-romance – which manages to do all that and still be sweetly (but certainly not saccharinely) uplifting.” [Read the full review.]

Rebecca Fraimow, who is I guess slightly biased by being a contributor, deems the entire anthology awesome and has this to say about mine:

“This story is just kind of adorable – it’s set on the steppes, about a young girl who is just starting to figure out her own sexuality, and her friendship with a woman from far away, and figuring out a way to be herself within her culture. I wanted to hug everybody in it.” [Read the full review.]

And, finally, Oreotalpa at Goodreads has this to say of mine:

“Loved the setting, loved the writing style, but I felt like this tried to cram way too much into a short story, rushing the emotional denouement and wrapping up loose ends too conveniently. I’d read the novel.” [Read the full review.]

I must admit to some agreement with that last one – which I suppose is even more inevitable given that I’ve written a far longer and more nuanced version of events in the novel. 60,000 words is a somewhat bigger canvas than 9,000. There are one or two other things I’d have tried to do differently about the story if I wrote it again (particularly Dursun’s relationship with Aynabat, which becomes very different in the novel) but I’m nonetheless fond and proud of it and I hope you enjoy it.